Butch Dalisay wrote a post a week or so ago about his not being a fan of the rampant social networking on the web. What a relief. I thought I was the only cranky old man around. And while I do have Facebook account, it was only at the insistent prodding of those near and dear to me. I hardly visit my Facebook page and I’m afraid I may come across as cold and distant to my many well-meaning friends who have poked me and keep sending me this and that invitation to join a cause. It seems I don’t respond well to being nudged, whether electronically or physically, and tend to keep my distance.

Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate what an amazing platform for connectivity Facebook and its ilk are. People I haven’t seen or heard from in decades are now my Facebook buddies. And I know why it’s such a hit for us Pinoys. It’s rooted deep in our national psyche, the need to be part of a community and to interact constantly. Read the rest of this entry »

Cartoon from The New Yorker.

To extricate oneself from a sticky situation, suicide is literally the last resort. A person in full possession of all his faculties would naturally hesitate to resort to what has been called a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But there are people and cultures who look upon self-annihilation as a viable option in order to save some vestige of one’s honor. The Japanese are of course well-known for this. Seppuku or ritual suicide is a means not only of recovering some terminal self-respect and atoning for one’s misdeeds. It can also be aimed at shaming a morally bankrupt system to change. This is what spurred Buddhist monks to immolate themselves publicly and dramatically during the Vietnam war. Japanese novelist and ultra-nationalist Yukio Mishima thought he could do this too but only succeeded in killing himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Although it won’t be coming from me.

It’s hard to generate any sympathy for a jerk who has been gifted with so much, in the looks (obviously, as those he bedded are as comely as they come) and brains (he’s an M.D. after all) department, yet has thrown it all away for a few destructive and less-than-cheap thrills. Dr. Kho is proof that moral depravity and plain dumb-ass (those who have seen the videos know that I mean this literally) imbecility cuts across professional boundaries. Somehow this makes us lawyers feel better. Read the rest of this entry »

To weigh in belatedly on the Chip Tsao brouhaha, the piece was indeed limp satire. Nevertheless, it’s still painful in that it is uncomfortably too close to the truth. That’s why it raised a lot of hackles.

But are we missing the bigger picture ? Carl, commenting on Manolo’s blog post, correctly points out:

Chip Tsao is a nobody. A trying-hard writer who really doesn’t make the grade. Besides, I am not very fond of the caustic Chinese sense of humor. All this outrage about Chip Tsao will soon pass. And Chip Tsao will continue to be a Z-list writer.

The most important question for me is, after this furor dies down, will we become less of a nation of servants? When one sees those Filipino domestics congregating in public in Hong Kong, it does seem to project that image of our country. For many Chinese, who don’t know better, that is the image they have of the Philippines. I have also noticed how it makes many upper-class Filipinos uncomfortable, preferring to turn another way. They would much rather not be lumped along with those domestics.

I would rather focus my indignation on those who were responsible for making our country a nation of servants. Why are our people fleeing in droves, happy to just be domestics in another country?

Read the rest of this entry »